by Alice Morse Earle, Seventh Edition, To the Memory of my Mother
Mother

Chapter 18.

The Authority of the Church and the Ministers.

Severely were the early colonists punished if they ventured
to criticise or disparage either the ministers or their teachings, or indeed any
of the religious exercises of the church. In Sandwich a man was publicly whipped
for speaking deridingly of God's words and ordinances as taught by the Sandwich
minister. Mistress Oliver was forced to stand in public with a cleft stick on
her tongue for "reproaching the elders." A New Haven man was severely whipped
and fined for declaring that he received no profit from the minister's sermons.
We also know the terrible shock given the Windham church in 1729 by the "vile
and slanderous expressions" of one unregenerate Windhamite who said, "I had
rather hear my dog bark than Mr. Bellamy preach." He was warned that he would be
"shakenoff and givenup," and terrified at the prospect of so dire a fate he read
a confession of his sorrow and repentance, and promised to "keep a guard over
his tongue," and also to listen to Mr. Bellamy's preaching, which may have been
a still more difficult task. Mr. Edward Tomlins, of Boston, upon retracting his
opinion which he had expressed openly against the singing in the churches, was
discharged without a fine. William Howes and his son were in 1744 fined fifty
shillings "apeece for deriding such as sing in the congregation, tearming them
fooles." The church music was as sacred to the Puritans as were the prayers, but
it must have been a sore trial to many to keep still about the vile manner and
method of singing. In 1631 Phillip Ratcliffe, for "speaking against the
churches," had his ears cut off, was whipped and banished. We know also the
consternation caused in New Haven in 1646 by Madam Brewster's saying that the
custom of carrying contributions to the Deacons' table was popish--was "like
going to the High Alter," and "savored of the Mass." She answered her accusers
in such a bold, highhanded, and defiant manner that her heinous offence was
considered worthy of trial in a higher court, whose decision is now lost.

The colonists could not let their affection and zeal for an
individual minister cause them to show any disrespect or indifference to the
Puritan Church in general. When the question of the settlement of the Reverend
Mr. Lenthal in the church of Weymouth, Massachusetts, was under discussion, the
tyranny of the Puritan Church over any who dared oppose or question it was shown
in a marked manner, and may be cited as a typical case. Mr. Lenthal was
suspected of being poisoned with the Anne Hutchinson heresies, and he also
"opposed the way of gathering churches." Hence his ordination over the church in
the new settlement was bitterly opposed by the Boston divines, though apparently
desired by the Weymouth congregation. One Britton, who was friendly towards
Lenthal and who spoke "reproachfully" and slurringly of a book which defended
the course of the Boston churches, was whipped with eleven stripes, as he had no
money to pay the imposed fine. John Smythe, who "got hands to a blank" (which
was either canvassing for signatures to a proxy vote in favor of Lenthal or
obtaining signatures to an instrument declaring against the design of the
churches), for thus "combining to hinder the orderly gathering" of the Weymouth
church at this time, was fined £2. Edward Sylvester for the same offence was
fined and disfranchised. Ambrose Martin, another friend of Lenthal's, for
calling the church covenant of the Boston divines "a stinking carrion and a
human invention," was fined £10, while Thomas Makepeace, another Weymouth
malcontent, was informed by those in power that "they were weary of him," or, in
modern slang, that "he made them tired." Parson Lenthal himself, being sent for
by the convention, weakened at once in a way his church followers must have
bitterly despised; he was "quickly convinced of his error and evil." His
conviction was followed with his confession, and in open court he gave under his
hand a laudable retraction, which retraction he was ordered also to "utter in
the assembly at Weymouth, and so no further censure was passed on him." Thus the
chief offender got the lightest punishment, and thus did the omnipotent Church
rule the whole community.

The names of loquacious, babbling Quakers and Baptists who
spoke disrespectfully of some or all of the ordinances of the Puritan church
might be given, and would swell the list indefinitely; they were fined and
punished without mercy or even toleration.

All profanity or blaspheming against God was severely
punished. One very wicked man in Hartford for his "fillthy and prophane
expressions," namely, that "hee hoped to meet some of the members of the Church
in Hell before long, and he did not question but hee should," was "committed to
prison, there to be kept in safe custody till the sermon, and then to stand the
time thereof in the pillory, and after sermon to be severely whipped." What a
severe punishment for so purely verbal an offence! New England ideas of
profanity were very rigid, and New England men had reason to guard well their
temper and tongue, else that latter member might be bored with a hot iron; for
such was the penalty for profanity. We know what horror Mr. Tomlins's wicked
profanity, "Curse ye woodchuck!" caused in Lynn meeting, and Mr. Dexter was
"putt in ye billboes ffor prophane saying dam ye cowe." The Newbury doctor was
sharply fined also for wickedly cursing. When drinking at the tavern he raised
his glass and said,--

"I'll pledge my friends, and for my foes
A plague for their heels, and a poxe for their toes."

He acknowledged his wickedness and foolishness in using the
"olde proverb," and penitently promised to curse no more.

Sad to tell, Puritan women sometimes lost their temper and
their good-breeding and their godliness. Two wicked Wells women were punished in
1669 "for using profane speeches in their common talk; as in making answer to
several questions their answer is, The Devil a bit." In 1640, in Springfield,
Goody Gregory, being grievously angered, profanely abused an annoying neighbor,
saying, "Before God I coulde breake thy heade!" But she acknowledged her "great
sine and faulte" like a woman, and paid her fine and sat in the stocks like a
man, since she swore like the members of that profane sex.

Sometimes the sins of the fathers were visited on the
children in a most extraordinary manner. One man, "for abusing N. Parker at the
tavern," was deprived of the privilege of bringing his children to be baptized,
and was thus spiritually punished for a very worldly offence. For some offences,
such as "speaking deridingly of the minister's powers," as was done in Plymouth,
"casting uncharitable reflexions on the minister," as did an Andover man; and
also for absenting one's self from church services; for "sloathefulness," for
"walking prophanely," for spoiling hides when tanning and refusing explanation
thereof; for selling short weight in grain, for being "given too much to
Jearings," for "Slanndering," for being a "Makebayte," for "ronging naibors,"
for "being too Proude," for "suspitions of stealing pinnes," for "pnishouse
Squerilouse Odyouse wordes," and for "lyeing," church-members were not only
fined and punished but were deprived of partaking of the sacrament. In the
matter of lying great distinction was made as to the character and effect of the
offence. George Crispe's wife, who "told a lie, not a pernicious lie, but
unadvisedly," was simply admonished and remonstrated with. Will Randall, who
told a "plain lie," was fined ten shillings. While Ralph Smith, who "lied about
seeing a whale," was fined twenty shillings and excommunicated.

In some communities, of which Lechford tells us New Haven
was one, these unhouselled Puritans were allowed, if they so desired, to stand
outside the meeting-house door at the time of public worship and catch what few
words of the service they could. This humble waiting for crumbs of God's word
was doubtless regarded as a sign of repentance for past deeds, for it was often
followed by full forgiveness. As excommunicated persons were regarded with high
disfavor and even abhorrence by the entire pious and godly walking community,
this apparently spiritual punishment was more severe in its temporal effects
than at first sight appears. From the Cambridge Platform, which was drawn up and
adopted by the New England Synod in 1648, we learn that "while the offender
remains excommunicated the church is to refrain from all communion with him in
civil things," and the members were specially "to forbear to eat and drink with
him;" so his daily and even his family life was made wretched. And as it was not
necessary to wait for the action of the church to pronounce excommunication, but
the "pastor of a church might by himself and authoritatively suspend from the
Lord's table a brother suspected of scandal" until there was time for
full examination, we can see what an absolute power the church and even the
minister had over church-members in a New England community.

Nor could the poor excommunicate go to neighboring towns
and settlements to start afresh. No one wished him or would tolerate him.
Lancaster, in 1653, voted not to receive into its plantation "any excommunicat
or notoriously erring agt the Docktrin & Discipline of churches of this
Commonwealth." Other towns passed similar votes. Fortunately, Rhode Island--the
island of "Aquidnay" and the Providence Plantations--opened wide its arms as a
place of refuge for outcast Puritans. Universal freedom and religious toleration
were in Rhode Island the foundations of the State. Josiah Quincy said that
liberty of conscience would have produced anarchy if it had been permitted in
the New England Puritan settlements in the seventeenth century, but the
flourishing Narragansett, Providence, and Newport plantations seem to prove the
absurdity of that statement. Liberty of conscience was there allowed, as Dr.
MacSparran, the first clergyman of the Narragansett Church, complained in his
"America Dissected," "to the extent of no religion at all." The Gortonians, the
Foxians, and Hutchinsonians, the Anabaptists, the Six Principle Baptists, the
Church of England, apparently all the followers of the eighty-two "pestilent
heresies" so sadly enumerated and so bitterly hated and "cast out to Satan" by
the Massachusetts Puritan divines,--all the excommunicants and exiles found in
Rhode Island a home and friends--other friends than the Devil to whom they had
been consigned.

Though the early Puritan ministers had such powerful
influence in every other respect, they were not permitted to perform the
marriage-service nor to raise their voices in prayer or exhortation at a
funeral. Sewall jealously notes when the English burial-service began to be read
at burials, saying, "the office for Burial is a Lying very bad office makes no
difference between the precious and the vile." The office of marriage was denied
the parson, and was generally relegated to the magistrate. In this, Governor
Bradford states, they followed "ye laudable custome of ye Low Countries." Not
rulers and magistrates only were empowered to perform the marriage ceremony;
squires, tavern-keepers, captains, various authorized persons might wed Puritan
lovers; any man of dignity or prominence in the community could apparently
receive authority to perform that office except the otherwise all-powerful
parson.

As years rolled on, though the New Englanders still felt
great reverence and pride for their church and its ordinances, the minister was
no longer the just man made perfect, the oracle of divine will. The
church-members escaped somewhat from ecclesiastical power, and some of them
found fault with and openly disparaged their ministers in a way that would in
early days have caused them to be pilloried, whipped, caged, or fined; and often
the derogatory comments were elicited by the most trivial offences. One parson
was bitterly condemned because he managed to amass eight hundred dollars by
selling the produce of his farm. Another shocking and severely criticised
offence was a game of bowls which one minister played and enjoyed. Still another
minister, in Hanover, Massachusetts, was reproved for his lack of dignity, which
was shown in his wearing stockings "footed up with another color;" that is, knit
stockings in which the feet were colored differently from the legs. He also was
found guilty of having jumped over the fence instead of decorously and
clerically walking through the gate when going to call on one of his
parishioners. Rev. Joseph Metcalf of the Old Colony was complained of in 1720
for wearing too worldly a wig. He mildly reproved and shamed the meddlesome
women of his church by asking them to come to him and each cut off a lock of
hair from the obnoxious wig until all the complainers were satisfied that it had
been rendered sufficiently unworldly. Some Newbury church-members, in 1742,
asserted that their minister unclerically wore a colored kerchief instead of a
band. This he indignantly denied, saying that he "had never buried a babe even
in most tempestuous weather," when he rode several miles, but he always wore a
band, and he complained in turn that members of his congregation turned away
from him on the street, and "glowered" at him and "sneered at him." Still more
unseemly demonstrations of dislike were sometimes shown, as in South Hadley, in
1741, when a committee of disaffected parishioners pulled the Rev. Mr Rawsom out
of the pulpit and marched him out of the meeting-house because they did not
fancy his preaching. But all such actions were as offensive to the general
community then as open expressions of dissatisfaction and contempt are now.